‘Stay here.’ Paullus knew what he had to do, and he did not want her to think that he was afraid.
‘No, I will come with you.’
He did not argue, for part of him was relieved. The battle at the Isthmus of Corinth had taught him that it was far harder to go back into battle. Sometimes only comradeship could make you put yourself at risk for a second time. She was just a girl, but she had a sword, and already this night had shown her composure and courage.
Again Paullus edged down the spiral staircase. Sword in one hand, he kept his other against the outer wall and felt for each step with his foot before placing his weight. Again the impenetrable blackness and the sheer weight of the surrounding building oppressed him. Irrationally he still feared that the solid stonework would give way under his boot. And at any moment half of him expected to feel the searing pain of an unseen blow.
Nothing could be heard except the sounds of his own furtive descent and the noises the girl made behind him. If some other foe was lurking in the temple, there would be ample warning of their coming.
Finally they reached the bottom. In the moonlight filtering from the high windows in the hall, he could see that no one was lying in ambush. Paullus had to stop and get his breath. It was chill, but he was running with sweat.
‘What now?’ she asked, almost with impatience.
‘Follow me.’
Paullus led her round all four sides of the colonnaded hall. He wanted to be quite certain that no enemy could assail them from behind. Satisfied, he went to the doorway to the storeroom.
There was no getting around the shattered terracotta on the floor of the entrance. He peered into the gloom. Each pile of offerings could conceal a man. They seemed to shift as he stared at them.
Be a man, he steeled himself. Do not let this girl think you a coward.
‘Stay back,’ he hissed.
This time she followed his wishes.
The shards broke under his boots as he entered. The myriad small sounds were incredibly loud in the confined space. Beyond them, he walked on the balls of his feet, poised and ready to spring from one teetering jumble of gifts to the gods to another. He switched direction in the alleyways between the offerings. It was like a small and black labyrinth and, unlike Theseus, he had no thread to guide him.
Eventually he was sure they were alone. He tried the back door. It was unlocked.
‘Help me with this table.’
Together they dragged the heavy object tight up against the boards of the door. Determined men could force their way into the temple, but they could not do so covertly.
‘What about the front door?’ she asked.
They went back across the main hall and checked it was still locked. The distance was too far to manhandle a bulky piece of furniture. Paullus went and fetched an amphora from the storeroom. He smashed it on the flags inside the door and spread the shards out with his foot.
Without a word, they made their way to the statue of the Hero in the centre of the hall. They sat with their backs against the plinth. From there they could keep watch on the main door.
‘Why did you come?’ she asked.
The truth was too confusing, perhaps too frightening: the Kindly Ones haunt me for a terrible thing I did, and only this shakes them for a while from my steps; perhaps, like the men in the wolfskins, I have developed a taste for killing.
‘It was the right thing to do,’ he said.
She seemed to accept that. ‘You are not like the other Romans.’
‘You Bruttians hate us.’
‘Of course.’ She spoke without rancour, as if explaining to a child. ‘You massacred our grandparents and stole our best land. Even now we are not citizens in our own country. Our men are conscripted as servants in the armies you send out to bring ruin to yet more peoples.’
It is our nature, he was tempted to say, like the fable of the scorpion and the frog. But he kept quiet.
‘Onirus said you were not as bad as the others.’
‘You know Onirus?’ Paullus was surprised.
‘He is my cousin.’
It had never occurred to Paullus that there was a link between the camp servant and her father. He had served with Onirus in the east, had gone hunting many times with Dekis, but now it struck him that he knew next to nothing about them. One was older and heavyset, the other younger and slighter, but beyond that he could not even picture what they looked like. An unsettling suspicion skulked at the fringes of his thoughts.
‘You are not like your friend, Lollius,’ she said.
‘He is not so bad.’
‘You are too trusting,’ she said with certainty. ‘He is selfish and cruel.’
Remembering what Lollius had said about her, Paullus did not reply.
They sat in silence, side by side. Paullus could feel her warmth, smell the subtle scent of her body. He wanted to put his arm around her. But he kept his distance. His own body stank of sweat and the sour reek of fear.
‘You are not married,’ Paullus said. Most girls were married at fourteen; she was nearer twenty.
‘Even you Romans do not force a girl to marry against her will.’ Her teeth showed white when she smiled.
‘You do not wish to wed?’
‘Someone has to keep house for my father, since my mother died.’
‘You cannot do so forever.’
‘My father is saving to buy a housekeeper. The money you gave him to trap the bandits helped.’
‘I am glad a Roman can be useful in some things.’
‘And you were generous with the plunder you gave Onirus.’
Paullus made a noncommittal noise. He had told Onirus not to mention the gift, but she was the camp servant’s cousin.
They sat, companionably enough, through the rest of the night. Sometimes they talked, mostly they did not. When Paullus turned to her she lifted her chin, but without vanity, and looked into his eyes. In the half-light, he thought that she was the loveliest thing he had ever seen.
When the sky through the high windows paled to the blue-grey of a pigeon, he got up and retrieved his entrenching tool and the weapon dropped by his assailant. It took considerably longer to find the spent arrow. Sitting down again he held out his hand, palm up, to the girl. Without hesitation, she took it. Her hand was small and dry, and callused with hard work. For Paullus it was a rare moment of peace.
At dawn they heard the procession approaching long before the key turned in the lock. As the leaves of the main door swung outwards, they remained sitting. The consternation of the crowd was pleasing. There were gasps of shock, and a couple of men even took a step backwards. Whatever they had been expecting, it was not this.
They were all there: Fidubius and his large bailiff Croton, Ursus the priest, Lollius and his father, Roscius and his young lover, the magistrates, everyone of note in the town. Together they crunched across the bits of broken amphora.
Still holding Minado’s hand, Paullus got up and helped her to her feet.
‘What are you doing here?’
Paullus ignored Fidubius’ question. ‘Two men came, not the daemon.’
‘Who?’
‘I do not know. The one I fought wore the mask of a wolf.’
‘What did they look like?’ Fidubius was impatient.
‘It was dark, and they were disguised. As they left, one appeared taller than the other. The bigger one dropped this.’ Paullus held out the sword.
Vibius snatched it from him. The customary refined disinterest of Lollius’ father had vanished, but, after turning the blade in his hand, it returned. ‘A kopis, an old Greek blade, a relic of the war with Hannibal. There are any number in Temesa – almost every farm has one. Some use them for cutting hay.’
‘And there was this.’
Roscius took the arrow from Paullus. The innkeeper studied it closely. ‘The work of Albinus the fletcher by the forum – everyone buys their arrows from him. Goose feathers, one of his more expensive.’
‘They came thr
ough the back door.’ Paullus turned to Ursus. ‘How many keys are there?’
The priest bridled, as if accused. ‘Three,’ he said stiffly. ‘I have one, and my assistant another.’
The man mentioned sidled forward. Overawed by the occasion, he did not speak, but held up a key.
‘The third hangs in the senate house.’
Everyone knew that the curia was kept locked. Only the councillors, and a couple of trusted public slaves, had access.
Roscius could contain himself no longer. ‘But if it is not the daemon, and it cannot be the brigands . . .’ His unspoken question trailed off.
Vibius drew himself up, as if addressing a court. ‘Both Junius and Hirtius were Roman citizens. The Bruttians have never been reconciled to their defeat. They want their land back. They are the enemy within.’
Paullus raised Minado’s hand. ‘Last night the intended victim was a Bruttian.’
‘A necessary sacrifice to induce yet more fear,’ Vibius said stuffily. His suggestion did not convince all those present.
‘Another eastern cult,’ Roscius said, ‘like the Bacchanalia outlawed by decree of the senate in Rome. Or the deadly superstition of the Jews. Or the Carthaginians – they sacrificed their own children. Thousands of them were abroad when Carthage fell. They want revenge.’
‘There is no evidence of foreign cults in Temesa,’ Ursus said. The words of the priest carried authority, but some men looked sideways at each other. Anything was possible with easterners.
Lollius walked forward with the usual slight overconfidence he employed, even when it was not necessary. ‘Both the victims owned land. Their killing could be inspired by the envy of the propertyless poor.’
‘Some hounds acquire a love of killing,’ Fidubius said. ‘It is the same with some men.’
Lollius looked at Fidubius. ‘Whoever they are, this is not over.’
‘For today it is,’ Paullus said. ‘I will return the girl to her father. And Kaido must be released. The old wise woman did not summon the Hero.’
The throng parted as Paullus led Minado by the hand out of the temple. Several men gave him odd looks. Since his return from the east they knew he had changed, and he had killed several men. The realisation came to Paullus that he was an object of suspicion, perhaps had been from the start. Only he and the girl could swear to the truth of what had happened last night. The others had just his word.
CHAPTER 20
Patria
609 Ab Urbe Condita (145 BC)
IT HAD BEEN ALMOST A MONTH since the night in the temple. There had been no more killings. One or two stories had circulated of sightings of wild men clad in the skins of wolves roaming the remote pastures and the depths of the Sila. While each one had, on investigation by the magistrates, turned out to be no more than unsubstantiated rumours, they were the product of the palpable sense of fear that still gripped the territory of Temesa. No one, if they could avoid it, went alone to out-of-the-way places, especially not after dark.
A hunting party, however, was the opposite of a solitary pursuit. A huge wild boar had been seen on land owned by Vibius along the upper reaches of the Acheron river. Initially Paullus had been unenthusiastic when Lollius had come to ask him to join them. It was October, the days were getting shorter and there was much work to be done. The grapes had to be gathered and the pears were ready for picking. When not labouring in the fields, Paullus had taken to spending his time with Minado.
Her father had thanked him with formal courtesy when he returned her unharmed to his smallholding. Yet since then, old Dekis had been oddly distant. Although his behaviour had changed, it was nowhere near enough to give any credence to the hint of suspicion that had snaked through Paullus’ mind in the temple. While it was not beyond the bounds of imagination that the Bruttian huntsman might have wanted to murder Junius and Hirtius, or any other Roman, it was inconceivable that he would have plotted to kill his only child. Perhaps his frigid demeanour merely indicated that, quite rightly, he blamed the Romans for the ordeal of his daughter, and a portion of that blame had somehow stuck even to her rescuer. Still, it encouraged him to leave them alone.
Sitting with her in the evening, watching the bats flitting over the river, gave Paullus a happiness he had not known in the last year, perhaps ever. He did not touch her. He wanted to, but the behaviour of Lollius was always at the back of his mind. Sometimes she took his hand. Minado talked about her family and her friends, and told tales about the townsfolk to entertain him.
‘You know Zeno, the little serving boy of Roscius, the one who is always arranging his hair with one finger? He is unhappy with the innkeeper. They say he is now also the lover of Croton, the brutish bailiff of Fidubius. Croton lives alone at the edge of the farm so he can indulge unobserved in his vices. But Roscius is a brute too. It will end unhappily.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Nineteen.’
‘And how does a nineteen-year-old girl know such things?’
Minado laughed. ‘People talk, your maids and servants talk. You Romans do not trouble yourselves about what you say in front of Bruttian servants, any more than they would in front of their cattle. We know more about you than you do yourselves.’
She talked happily and unselfconsciously. Mostly Paullus was silent. He wanted to talk to her, wanted to tell her about the death of the Achaean Diaeus, and, above all, wanted to tell her the thing he had done in Corinth. But he did not. Even if she were not repulsed, she would not understand. No one could understand who had not been there. And it would be unfair to put that burden upon her.
Paullus had been more reluctant to forego another evening with Minado than he had been to leave the grape harvest to old Eutyches. But Lollius had been insistent. His father particularly wanted Paullus to join the hunt. Vibius wanted to talk to him in confidence. It was a matter of importance. Fidubius wanted to talk to him as well. Paullus had let himself be persuaded. He liked hunting, and he was intrigued as to what this matter of importance was. Paullus had his suspicions, and it would be interesting if they were confirmed.
The hunting party had crossed the river and climbed up into the hills the day before. They had followed the course of a shallow mountain stream that ran down to the Sabutus. Its waters were as grey as the rocks, and trees leant across its surface at improbable angles. The going was tough, but they all walked. Vibius and Fidubius set the pace. For all his sleek urbanity, Vibius was as hard in mind and body as Fidubius. Age had not weakened the teak toughness of either. The servants had struggled to keep up. Although, of course, they were burdened with the baggage.
In the afternoon they had come out into the high country of the upper Acheron. It was a land of open, broad meadows, but always ringed with woods, and always with the mountain peaks on the skyline. They made camp in the lee of a stand of holm oaks. They ate and made conversation, but nothing of importance was raised.
The sleep of Paullus had been undisturbed. There had been no sign of the Kindly Ones since he had met Minado in the temple. In the morning he had worried that he was treating her as a talisman to keep the old women from his heels. Without thinking he had touched the theta charm on his belt.
After the sun had risen, they had eaten porridge and drunk a little warmed wine. This was not an outing of sybaritic nobles, but of men still close to the soil, and there was a bite to the autumn air. When they had finished, a shepherd of Vibius had led them to the valley where the boar had most often been seen. A single hound had been released. The Spartan bitch, tawny and alert, had quartered the ground, nose down, at a half-run. There were many scents. When she got on the freshest, they had followed in single file. Soon they had seen the signs: broken branches, tusk marks on the trees.
The bitch came to a thicket, close by a tiny tributary of the Acheron. Boars liked such places: well watered, and warm in the winter and cool in the summer. True to her training, the bitch did not enter the undergrowth, but gave tongue. A huntsman whistled her in, and tied her up with t
he others at a distance from the lair.
The boar had not been roused by the baying, and the hunt was arranged in silence. The nets were strung across a narrow place down the valley. The meshes were thrown over the forked branches of trees, the rings well pegged to the ground. The inside was propped with twigs, so that the interior should seem as light as possible to the onrushing boar. The skirting lines were fastened to strong boughs, and even the places with bad footing were blocked with brush, so that the boar could not escape to the side.
Vibius, Fidubius and a pair of huntsmen took their stance behind the nets. They had bows as well as javelins and boar spears. The younger hunters got into line uphill of the thicket. Paullus was in the centre, with Lollius to his left and a youth called Solinus to his right. There were two others, like Solinus, relatives of the older landowners, one on each wing. Respectfully, the huntsmen took their place a few paces to the rear. Paullus noticed Fidubius’ unlovely bailiff Croton was behind him.
‘Are you ready for war?’
Paullus swallowed his contempt for the words of Lollius. A boar hunt held its dangers, but it was not war. Nothing else was like war. Lollius had no idea of what he spoke.
‘Ready!’ the others chorused.
Old Dekis brought up the hounds. Whatever the Bruttian’s feelings towards Lollius, he needed the money to buy a housekeeper, and Vibius would be paying well.
The hounds were Molossian: eight great black beasts. They were silent but twitched with impatience, white teeth showing and eyes popping. They wore iron studded collars, useful against wolves, but offering no protection against the tusks of a boar. So great was the strength of a boar that when provoked his tusks became red-hot. They singed the coats of hounds they narrowly missed. If you placed a hair on a tusk, as soon as the boar was killed, it would shrivel with the heat.
‘Let them go, Dekis.’
They were on slip leads, and went away smoothly. As soon as they were released, they raised a terrible clamour and rushed into the thicket. Paullus could hear them working through the undergrowth. Then something much larger was crashing through the bushes.
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